Written by

The Post-Crescent

Bringing a message that the state needs to grow jobs and control spending, Scott Walker spoke Tuesday with The Post-Crescent editorial board.

Walker, the Milwaukee County executive, is a Republican candidate for governor — Mark Neumann is his main opponent in the Sept. 14 primary. The winner is likely to face Democrat Tom Barrett, the Milwaukee mayor, in the Nov. 2 general election to replace Democratic incumbent Jim Doyle.

com, Walker talked about his views on the issues facing the state, as well as his campaign. Here's an edited transcript of the discussion:

Can you fill us in on the central themes of your campaign and why you want to be governor?

In terms of key themes, certainly we talk about jobs, but I think there's a core difference between where Jim Doyle is at and where I'd argue Tom Barrett would take the state vs. where I would take the state.

Simply put, the question I'd pose to people is, "Are you better off than you were eight years ago?" If you think the economy's better, the state's better, then I tell people, "You should vote for Tom Barrett."

But if you're like me and you think the state is headed in the wrong direction and we need a fundamental change, I think I offer the best alternative.

In terms of jobs, it's mainly getting government out of the way. Don't spend more money than you have. Smaller government is better than bigger government. And, most importantly, people create jobs, not the government. The government creates an environment that's either positive or negative.

(Page 2 of 5)

I got into this race because I think this current governor has put us in a more negative light when it comes to creating jobs in this state and I want to be in place to help turn that around.

When you ask if people think they're better off now than they were eight years ago, how much does a governor have to do with that? If you ask the people in your county if they're better off now than they were before you took office, many of them would probably say no.

Certainly, globally, we're in a recession. But probably compared to any other position in the state, the governor is in a position to have an impact, positive or negative, on our economic climate here, much more so than a county executive or a mayor or any other position.

States that have a lower cost of business, even in these tough economic times, are the states that have actually seen pretty decent job growth. And, in turn, they're the states that largely have budgets intact and don't have the challenges we do.

When you talk about taxes, though, how much of that is on the governor and how much is on the Legislature?

I'm not looking to say it's about a party affiliation. We're going to need a governor who's going to focus on making it easier to do business in this state. That means taxes on individuals, taxes on employers, capping off property taxes, even phasing out state taxes on retirement income.

It also means other ways to lower the cost of doing business, like regulations. Many small and mid-sized employers tell me that the cost of complying with regulations is as burdensome as the tax burden.

Should Mark Neumann drop out of the race and is it appropriate for party leaders to urge him to do so?

Some people who are active in the party have; that's their own doing. It's nothing that we have anything to do with.

Frankly, there's plenty of evidence that shows that coming out of a strong primary with a solid win can be a positive.

I'm not afraid of a primary or a general election fight because I think our ideas and our background show that we can get the job done and we're running on the right issues.

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If you're elected, you're looking at a $2.6 billion deficit over the two years of the next budget. With that hole and the tax breaks and credits you're proposing, you're going to have to cut something. What do you want to cut?

Between now and Nov. 2, we're going to lay out an overall tax plan. My goal is to cut taxes across the board. Not just repeal a tax here and a tax there, but cut taxes for everyone.

The other part is you've got to control spending. That means wage and benefit reform for public sector employees.

The vast majority of the people who work for government are good public servants, so it's not about picking on public employees, but pointing out you can't have wages and benefits here (holding hand high) for the government and wages and benefits for the private sector here (holding hand low), particularly on the benefits side.

Same with retirement contributions. You can't have the public pick up the full cost of retirement contributions when most people either have a 401(k) or the few that have a pension are making some contribution as an employee.

Those things have got to change. Even minor changes, when you have 69,000 state employees, will have a tremendous impact.

And then you have to tackle other big areas. You look at the Wisconsin Shares program child care component. Originally, under W-2, that was supposed to be a temporary safety net. Under Jim Doyle, the time limits were eliminated. It became a permanent entitlement and, in turn, it opened the door to the fraud and abuse we've seen all across the state. We've got to clamp down on that.

Even the independent Legislative Audit Bureau has pointed out that anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of that program is fraud. You're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars there.

You look at BadgerCare and, to me, again it was supposed to be a temporary step up, not a permanent entitlement. I'd like to get more people off the BadgerCare and Medicaid rolls and into the workforce, where they're not dependent on public assistance.

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And, when it comes to the biggest part of the state budget — about 60 percent of it is aid to local governments: school districts, counties, municipalities — we're going to have to say, "If you want to get state aid, here are things you can do to draw down your costs," which means wage and benefit reform at the local level.

This governor repealed the (Qualified Economic Offer) — the Legislature joined with him. That was one of the few measures that local school districts had to control wages and benefits for school district employees. We've got to go back to something like that.

We've got to stop the mandates on local government. We've got to open the door toward school districts and local governments buying into lower-costs health care plans.

Those are things where you can help local governments still provide core services without pouring more state aid in that we obviously can't afford at this point.

A lot of the spending controls you're talking about are subject to union negotiations. How do you get around that?

You've got to play hardball. There's just no doubt about it. Part of how we got three of our (county) unions to settle is they saw the dilemma we're in in terms of a budget and, in our case, we had said to people who were helping us, we pulled back the additional furlough days.

So every time we've had a union settle, I sign an executive order that repeals those additional furlough days and they just help us balance the budget by the reforms that we pass.

For the other groups, in some cases, they have up to 22 additional furlough days, which is about 12.5 percent of their wages and they end up balancing it that way.

On BadgerCare, are you talking about setting a time limit for assistance and then knocking people off when they reach the time limit?

I think you have to have time limits in place, as we did under Gov. (Tommy) Thompson's original proposal, and the state has to work more aggressively for ways to plug people in on the W-2 side, working with local counties, into work opportunities. In most cases, you're talking about 24 months, depending on the threshold there.

(Page 5 of 5)

Obviously, it's a tough economy now, but it's all the more reason why it's imperative that we do things that help stimulate the economy, not through more government spending but getting government out of the way so there are more jobs 24 months from now.

When I first brought this up, somebody said, "Well, you're trying to cut people off of Medicaid." I said, "Yeah." That kind of shocked him. He said, "We'll that sounds kind of cruel." No, it isn't.

I'm trying to take people off of the welfare rolls and put them onto the workforce rolls, because long term, not only can we not sustain people being permanently on an entitlement on Medicaid rolls but, just for those individuals personally, it's a much better scenario for them and their families.

The original goal of BadgerCare was to cover kids. Is your idea to scale back the expansion of BadgerCare? Do you want to keep kids covered, or do you want to set a time limit for them and their families, too?

I want to make sure kids are covered, so that would be part of the protection you'd want to put in place. But, again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be more aggressively moving, because the best place for them to be covered is outside of BadgerCare, where their parents are in gainful employment in a spot where they get the same or better coverage than they get in BadgerCare.